Hoyle was born and raised in Morgantown, North Carolina, not far from a farm that has been in his mother's family since before the Civil War. Although he grew up in the outskirts of town, the family made countless visits to the farm, where he learned to swim and ride a mule, among other things associated with growing up in the country. At the age of four or five, he heard square dance music for the first time, and the experience elicited such an excited and physical reaction - and disturbance- from the child that his father had to take him home.

His mother had a great love of classical music, however, and Jerry started taking piano lessons in the first grade. About that same time, he began singing. A shy child, he usually stood behind a piece of furniture when he sang. His father was a barber and when Jerry would visit the barbershop, he would be coaxed with a dime or quarter to sing. He also learned to play the trumpet while in grade school, and continued playing it through his freshman year in college.

He and his mother joined the Adventist church when he was in the sixth grade. Near the end of his tenth grade year, the director of his high school marching band encouraged him to try out for first chair trumpet position. This created a dilemma because it meant he would have to play at Friday night football games and in marches on Saturday.

He transferred to Mt. Pisgah Academy for his final two years, where he was immediately accepted by the students and became a good friend of Don Vollmer, another musically talented student. In the summers, Hoyle worked at a youth camp in the Southern Union, where he, Bob Summerour, and John Waller formed a trio that sang songs and played their instruments during the evening campfire programs. Hoyle, who learned to play string bass and harmonica at this time, and Summerour arranged the music, which was then introduced in that setting.

At the academy, he worked in the broom shop where the supervisor encouraged him to consider becoming a minister, a recommendation he followed when he graduated and entered Southern Missionary College, now Southern Adventist University, as a theology major. After two years at SMC, he and Summerour, who was also attending the college, sailed for England in 1964 for a year of study at Newbold College.

In their second year at SMC, they had become acquainted with Roy Scarr, visiting professor from Newbold College who enjoyed their music and encouraged them to come to NC for a year. He promised if they would come to obtain a string bass so that they could continue their musical collaboration as a duo.

Vollmer learned about the trip from Hoyle and decided at the last minute to join them and other friends he knew, secretly gained acceptance to the college as a student, and traveled to the campus where he surprised them by showing up shortly after school started. The three men started to sing American folk music and arrangements of spirituals and other religious music to the delight of both students and faculty at the college.

By the end of the first semester, they had started to play off-campus, known as the Shady Grove Singers, a name taken from their opening song at concerts. They began playing at the New Gallery Center, an Adventist evangelistic venue in London, on a regular basis. One of the goals of the center was to present religion in a setting that would attract non-Adventist youth, a strategy facilitated by the trio with its folk music.

One of the programs presented by the center, a variety show called "The Best Saturday Night in Town," became a showplace where the trio, which would engage in humorous repartee and Southern style kidding between numbers, became a highlight. When their stay in England ended, they were given the "New Gallery Personality Award," an acknowledgement of the pivotal role they had played in the center's programs.

The return to the U.S. would mean an end to the trio unless Vollmer, who had been attending Atlantic Union College, decided to transfer to SMC. Following a summer of extensive travel throughout Europe, all three enrolled at SMC, where they changed their name to The Wedgwood Trio.

Word of their success in England preceded them to the SMC campus, and when they played at the first college program of the year, a hootenanny, they were a hit with the students. By the beginning of the second semester, they were frequently playing off campus at numerous church functions and at events in other Adventist schools. When Hoyle graduated at the end of the year, he took a job at a school in nearby Chattanooga so that the trio could continue.

During the school year they had worked with Jim Hannum, a teacher at SMC, to produce their first record, My Lord, What a Morning. When the next school year started, the trio resumed singing, and began selling their record at concerts. Record sales and it playing on religious music radio stations led to increased popularity and more requests to perform.

H.M.S. Richards, Jr., of the Voice of Prophecy broadcast heard them perform while visiting on campus and approached them about singing at evangelistic meetings he was holding in Texas on behalf of the Voice of Prophecy. Their success in that and another series of meetings led Richards to invite them to join with him and Del Delker in the summer of 1967 during their tours to camp meetings on behalf of the VOP.

By the end of that summer, the Wedgwood Trio was nationally known in Adventist circles and hugely popular with young people. The reception accorded the group by older Adventists, however, was mixed.

Some negative reactions were visceral, surfacing more than any other time during their travels with Richards and Delker that summer. After one introductory performance in an evening meeting at a Mid-western camp meeting, Richards was told the trio would not be allowed to perform at the youth meetings the next day. This action, the most extreme that summer, was a blow to the trio as well as Delker and Richards. Both would later talk about how they had enjoyed working with the trio and the positive impact the group had had on the young people that summer during their travels in thirteen states and two provinces in Canada.

Two more additional recordings led to their acceptance into mainstream Adventist music. Bookings for performances had to be done six to nine months in advance and they were performing in sellout concerts to enthusiastic and appreciative audiences in large and well-known venues such as the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in California.

By the summer of 1969, however, a decline in the size of audiences and a drop in record sales occurred. In mainstream music, edgier sounds in rock music and more sophisticated folk music were emerging as the new rage with young audiences.

With the approach of a new decade, Summerour and Hoyle felt the trio should experiment and incorporate some of these newer trends into their performances. They wanted to use more rhythmic activity, electric keyboards, and amplified string instruments. They also wanted to sing more thought-provoking lyrics about issues developing in the church and society.

Vollmer, however, became increasingly uneasy as with these changes. For him, the new approach was a departure from what they had wanted to do when they had started five years earlier. The newer music conveyed a message of anger and rebellion that stood in sharp contrast with the music of hope and affirmation they had been singing.

He was troubled over what he felt would be a compromise of his principles if he continued with the group and, after discussing his concerns with the other two, withdrew. It was a troubling development for the trio, the end of an experience that had created extremely close personal bonds and many satisfying memories.

Volmer left the group three weeks before a major concert scheduled at La Sierra College, later University. A cancellation of the contract wasn't possible and since time was of the essence, the two men invited Gary Evans, a senior at Glendale Academy and an accomplished guitarist, to audition.

Although Evans' life experience of growing up in California and his age differed from that of the other two men, musical aspects meshed surprisingly well from the start. Evans now became part of a new group called Wedgwood, one that began forging a new identity, a more contemporary sound.

Electric string instruments were added and Hoyle's acoustic string bass was replaced with an electric one. Electric keyboards were added, played by John Waller, a medical student who had worked with Hoyle and Summerour years earlier at the youth camp. When the transformed group played the concert at LSC previously scheduled for the older trio, some in the audience began leaving during the program. Besides the new sound, the group adopted a more contemporary look that included long hair, a beard, moustaches, and modish clothes.

Although their concerts created some controversy as they performed in different settings, it was a concert at Pacific Union College that became a turning point for them. At the time of the concert, the students responded with increasing enthusiasm as the program progressed and then gave them a rousing ovation at the end.

Shortly after their return home from PUC, however, they received a letter from F.O. Rittenhouse, president of the college. In it, he revealed that although the music department had unanimously urged a cancellation of the scheduled performance prior to their coming, the school had felt it should honor its agreement with them. Rittenhouse concluded his letter by stating that in light of its performance and standards, the college had decided the group would not be invited back for another appearance on campus.

Additionally, he noted that a copy of his letter was being sent to all of the other Adventist colleges and universities. Rittenhouse's letter, distorted news about the group, and false rumors about supposed drug use resulted in fewer and fewer invitations for concerts.

Wedgwood felt it was speaking to cultural issues with thought-provoking lyrics and finely crafted music suitable for Adventist youth in the 1970s, an era characterized by rebellion against authority and the status quo. Increasing numbers of Adventists began, however, to see them as facilitating turmoil among the church's youth.

They began working on an album titled Dove that would present their most creative work. For a year, they rewrote and rescored some of the songs and had multiple recording sessions, redoing numerous tracks in their quest for perfection.

During that year, they presented a concert at the Loma Linda University Church in September 1972. The concert was recorded and released as a live-concert album. The church was packed and from the start of the concert, the performers sensing the growing excitement in the crowd, responded with one of the best performances of their lives. A third of the way through the concert, the audience began applauding, an unheard of response in Adventist church sanctuaries at that time.

The euphoria following the obvious success of the program vanished a few days later when the Loma Linda city newspaper panned the concert in a review headlined "Wedgwood: Shall We Dance?" When the album of that concert was released a few weeks later, the university church requested that its name not be mentioned in the jacket liner. Yet another blow followed when the just released Dove album was recalled from Adventist bookstores a month later. They now made moves to begin their post-Wedgwood lives.

Hoyle, who had been teaching at Loma Linda Academy, went through a traumatic divorce about the time of the group's ending. He briefly worked as a medical social worker and then enrolled in a doctoral program in clinical psychology. After completing a Ph.D. in that area, he did a post-doctoral internship in the LLU department of psychiatry and eventually became a clinical faculty member there, a position he still holds.

In 1990, twenty-one years after the original trio had disbanded, Hoyle contacted Summerour and Vollmer with a suggestion that get together and play for the fun of it. Although Vollmer was hesitant, they and their families met at Hoyle's home where, following a meal together, they tuned their instruments and began to sing. It was an emotional reunion that started with Down in the Valley and ended with Shall We gather at the River, the song they had used as the ending number at every concert they had given as the Wedgwood Trio.

Inspired by that informal reunion, they agreed that they would perform together again as the Wedgwood Trio, if invited to do so in the future. Two years passed before they received an invitation to play at a reunion concert for a convention of baby boomers in Long Beach, California. The concert ended in a standing ovation, a resounding affirmation of the role they had played in the lives of their audience some two decades earlier.

Still unsure about whether to continue and, if so, at what level, they accepted an invitation to perform during alumni weekend at Southern Adventist University. Because of the enthusiastic reception they received at this appearance, they made personal and financial commitments to continue as a trio.

By 1995, three years after that first reunion concert, they were giving up to 25 performances a year, many ending in standing ovations. They bought back the rights to their earlier records and, in February 1993, released a CD with highlights from recordings done from 1964 to 1969. The success of that collection led to a second CD featuring music done from 1970 to 1973. They have since recorded additional CDs, with sales of the collections and new releases totaling over 50,000 copies.

In 1995, the Wedgwood Trio traveled to Australia, where they sang in camp meetings and at Avondale College to enthusiastic audiences. Two of their more meaningful concerts abroad, however, were performed at alumni weekend at Newbold College in England in the summer of 1995. They took their families along and shared with them nostalgic visits to sites that had had meaning to them as college students.

A week before going to Newbold, they performed at the General Conference Session in the Netherlands. While three decades earlier they had been viewed with alarm by many in the Adventist church, they were now featured at the largest church gathering in history to that point and greeted with applause, after their numbers.

In subsequent years, they have traveled and performed extensively. Dick Walker, a fiddler who has played with them since 1996, recently wrote about that experience, noting particularly Hoyle's demeanor and contribution to the group:

The passage of years and the changes around them in society and the church as well as in each of their lives have forged lifelong friendships. Like the Voice of Prophecy broadcast and Faith for Today telecast, which pioneered new ways in which to do evangelism for those outside the church, the Wedgwood Trio was the first to show a way to reach and keep young people and members with differing tastes in the church.

Summerour recently commented about Hoyle's role in the commentary that occurred between numbers:

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